“I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from [Iraqi] civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide,” declares Google chief Eric Schmidt.

About 5,000 of the 15,000 treasures the museum once held have been recovered.

I am thankful for Garrett sharing this news.

(How can I get a job with a cool project like that?)

How to Search For Certain Colors in Google Images
 http://ow.ly/1owr
(Source: neiljohnford)

…

Top 10 Electronic Reminder Services
 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,234…
(Source: ResourceShelf)

Two new improvements to Google results pages
 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/t…

…

100 Free Useful Mac Applications (Part 1)
 http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/100-free-us…
(Source: Ellyssa Kroski)

101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
 http://www.pcworld.com/article/161342/10…
(Source: digg)

As of March 16, 2009, 5,046 plus jobs have been lost in the United States.

For more info:

http://graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/

Posted by Rich

“Now, that’s a big number, but we actually store four image sizes for each uploaded photo, so that’s over 40 billion files.”

Other stats:

* 2-3 Terabytes of photos are being uploaded to the site every day
* We have just over one petabyte of photo storage
* We serve over 15 billion photo images per day
* Photo traffic now peaks at over 300,000 images served per second

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=30695603919

Info via the iLibrarian blog:

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/

Posted by Rich

“With the popularity of Library 2.0, libraries are getting more complicated these days, and it’s becoming harder to make sure that everyone is happy. You have to stay on top of online collections, new library programs, websites, and more. Read on to find out how you can make these and other components of your library better, and make life easier for yourself and the people that visit your library.

General

Consider these tips when looking at overall ways to improve usability in your library.

1. Conduct a usability study: Gather some of your patrons, ask them to find something in the library, and analyze their behavior.
2. Make use of what users already know: Model your design after things that your user is likely to be familiar with already.
3. Use descriptive wording: Instead of using project names for something, call it what it really is. For example, instead of calling a search engine “Find It!,” simply call it a search engine, or “Find It! Search Engine.”
4. Avoid overwhelming users: Give enough information to provide guidance, but not so much that they’ll be confused.
5. Be friendly: No one wants to visit a library where the staff is rude and unhelpful.
6. Consider your users: When creating usable design, think about your users and how they’ll be utilizing what you create.
7. Use common terms: Make sure the words you’re using are easily understood by users.
8. Aim to save time: Make it a goal to help your visitors navigate information quickly.
9. Make your library desirable: Design and market your library in a way that makes people want to use it.”

Website

Make your website easy to use and navigate with these tips.

10. Be consistent: Use the same fonts and design elements on all of your library’s pages so that users always know they’re still on your site.
11. Put a help link on every page: Don’t leave users stranded. Give them a way to get help no matter where they are.
12. Use templates: Create a template for your site, and base the design of all pages on that template.
13. Make your catalog search incredibly easy to find: Most visitors to your library’s website will be looking for items, so be sure to make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for right away.
14. Check for errors: Make sure that your site does not have any broken links or grammatical errors that will undermine the quality and authority of the library.
15. Create effective navigation: Use navigation that is simple and easy to understand.
16. Put your most important information up top: Avoid making your patrons scroll to find information. Put all of your most used functions and information high in the display field.
17. Check for accessibility: Ensure that your website is usable for everyone by assessing your site’s accessibility.
18. Be action-oriented: Let users choose what they want to do, like “reserve an item.”
19. Meet specific goals and tasks: Consider what your site’s visitors are coming to do, and make it easy for them to do it.
20. Design for quick loading: Don’t make users wait around for information. Create a quick loading website.
21. Create a footer “mullet”: Put all of your fun stuff like Flickr images, news, and events in your footer.
22. Leave bread crumbs: Show your users where they should go by putting lots of links in your website’s text.
23. Use lots of white space for important elements: Place a good deal of white space around important site elements like your search box in order to draw attention to them.
24. Create a task-centered home page: Instead of overwhelming visitors with information, give them areas where they can do tasks like search for a book or get directions to the library.
25. Make your search as Google-like as possible: Most visitors will intuitively understand how to do searches on Google, so model your search after theirs so that they’ll be able to use it easily.
26. Offer larger font sizes: Allow users to choose what size text they’d like to use for your site.

For the whole list:

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2008/07/14/100-ways-to-improve-usability-in-your-library/

Info via iLibrarian:

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2008/08/04/sarahs-favorite-online-readers-advisory-tools/ Sarah Houghton-Jan of the LibrarianInBlack blog has a list of nifty readers advisory online tools:

# AllReaders.com – One of the first free, online readers advisory tools, no list of this nature would be complete without AllReaders. Search by what you’re interested in – title, author, plot, setting, character, adversaries, setting, style, etc. The guided searching offers thousands of permutations and options and gets very specific (and largely user-loved) results. You have to try this to believe it.
# Bettendorf Public Library’s Young Adult Books in Series and Sequels – Teen series & sequels browseable by author and series title or searchable by author, series title, or book title.
# Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Picture Book Index – Browse picture books by subject (they get really, really detailed). Great for finding a list of books about “X” for that kid who seems to think he’s read everything (oh yeah, and that kid’s parents).
# Database of Award Winning Children’s Literature – Created and maintained by fellow-California librarian Lisa Bartle, DAWCL is searchable by 13 different fields including reader’s age, historical period, setting, genre, format, and more. Resulting lists of award-winners are a great place to get young readers started.
# Downer’s Grove Public Library Author Read-Alikes – The author read-alike feature of the subscription database NoveList is one of its most popular features. Here’s a very respectable list of some of the most popular authors for whom people request read-alikes, with a half-dozen recommendations (or more) for each author.
# Fantastic Fiction – Browse for authors or series names, or search for authors or titles to get some pretty comprehensive bibliographies, cover shots, book descriptions, and more (like information on various editions). Great for those looking for quick and comprehensive book information for their favorite authors. The site also includes award information and new U.S. releases in hardback, paperback, and audio.

 FictionDB.com – Half-free, half-commercial site operated by the Riviera Group. The free parts of the site offers a huge list of book lists (200,000+ titles, which you can browse by genre or search) as well as a access to series and sequels lists (only by author’s last name though, which is useless in multi-author series). Still, worth a look.
# FictionFinder (beta) – This prototype from OCLC lets you search or browse by genre, subject, imaginary place or setting (how cool is that?), or fictional character (equally cool), including through a tag-cloud interface with popular folksonomies. More specific is better here, as this is a huge database (immigrants returns nearly 700 hits). Each record has extensive information about reading level, genres, characters, settings, etc.
# Gnooks – My students either love this or hate it. For recommendations you can try either Gnod’s Suggestions (supply it with 3 authors you like, and it will start suggesting other similar authors) or the Map of Literature (supply it with 1 author you like, and it will provide a seizure-inducing ever-moving visual map of authors).
# Guys Read – A wonderfully fun and interactive site from guys-reading-guru Jon Scieszka that lets you search or browse for recommendations for adults in general or “young, middle, and older” guys.
# Internet Speculative Fiction Database – The center for all things science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Search by author, title, series, and more to get some serious information. Author pages include complete bibliographies (including collections they took part in), series information, links to various official and unofficial web resources, and more. The site also offers an extensive list of award winners.

Here’s the link for the whole list:

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2008/06/20/ask-metafilter-avoiding-death-by-chocolate-chip-cookies/ nbsp;Lifehacker.com, a nifty website, usually posts Ask MetaFilter roundups, one of which had the following question:

“What am I missing in my diet that I crave Chocolate Chip cookies all the time?:

“I want to eat chocolate chip cookies almost all the time. The only time I don’t want to eat them is the couple of days after a good workout or exercise. I haven’t been able to drink milk for years. I’m guessing there’s some kind of vitamin that gets produced when I work out that stifles the cravings? Maybe this vitamin (D?) is in chocolate and in milk? I can eat cheese, and do often.”

“On a normal day, I could eat 30 chocolate chip cookies. On the days after I workout, I could be wearing a shirt made of
chocolate chip cookies and not even want to eat them.”

“What gives? Is there some vitamin or nutrient I’m missing that I can take to stop me from consuming every chocolate chip cookie on earth? This has been going on for years. I need help figuring out how to stop. This is not healthy.”

Here’s the link for the answers:

 http://lifehacker.com/

BTW: Sports nutritionist Nancy Clark has a new edition of her book, Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook out:

# Paperback: 472 pages
# Publisher: Human Kinetics Publishers; 4 edition (March 14, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0736074155
# ISBN-13: 978-0736074155

I highly recommend that people buy this book.

Here’s a link to Amazon for more info:

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2008/05/26/free-icons-wordpress-themes-newspape Smashing Magazine has scores of nifty resources on free icons, WordPress themes, wallpapers, web newspaper designs, fonts, pictures, Ajax and Java scripts, tools and screensavers. Though you might check each site for any copyright info:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Link via What I Learned Today:

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2008/03/23/80-online-resources-for-book-lovers/ Kevin Bondelli’s YD Blog posted “80 Online Resources For Book Lovers”:

9. ManyBooks.net contains about 17,000 ebooks for your PDA, iPod, or ebook reader. All of the ebooks are free of cost. They also show PSP and cell-phone friendly ebooks.

Here’s more of the list:

http://tinyurl.com/2oyber

Link via the iLibrarian library blog:

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/

Posted by Rich